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A bank employee (19) is said to have stolen 735,500 euros from the safe of a VR branch in Feldkirchen.
Nobody knows where the money is.
© D.-W.
Ebener/dpa
A bank employee (19) is said to have stolen 735,500 euros from the safe of a VR branch in Feldkirchen.
Nobody knows where the money is.
Feldkirchen – An employee is said to have robbed the VR Bank in Feldkirchen of almost three quarters of a million euros.
Since yesterday, Thursday, the 19-year-old at the time of the crime has had to answer at the Munich regional court.
At the end of the first day of negotiations it seems clear: the money will probably be gone for good.
The bank clerk started working at the branch in February 2022.
On the day of the crime, July 29, 2022, he was supposed to count money in the cash register in the service area and take it to the vault in the basement, the indictment says.
According to the “four-eyes principle”, he should have done this with a colleague.
Instead, according to the prosecution, the 19-year-old went into the safe alone with the money and packed it and the cash stored there in his backpack.
The 735,500 euros apparently also included the 220,000 euros that the defendant had ordered from the Bundesbank a week earlier - "for a fictitious customer," as the indictment states.
Arrested only after six months
When it was noticed that the cash register was empty, two colleagues confronted the 19-year-old.
According to the indictment, he stated that “his life depends on the money” and that “his grandmother has a lot of debts.”
He is said to have fled via the underground car park.
The Polish native was only arrested six months later.
He has been in custody ever since.
When he was driven from Stadelheim to a doctor's appointment in Munich in March 2023, he apparently ran away.
Because he resisted being arrested again and injured a police officer during the pursuit, the now 21-year-old also has to answer for bodily harm and resisting and assaulting law enforcement officers.
After the charges were read out, those involved in the proceedings withdrew for a two-hour legal discussion.
If juvenile criminal law is applied, the public prosecutor's office considers a youth sentence of between four and a half and five years to be appropriate, and if adult criminal law is used, between six and seven years, reported the presiding judge Stephan Kirchinger.
The defense is apparently convinced that the 19-year-old did not have the required maturity and considers a youth sentence of between two years and eight months and three and a half years to be sufficient.
The court announced that it would call in an expert to provide information on the question of a delay in maturation.
Only then will the court propose a specific punishment range, explained Kirchinger, but added that he considers the prosecutor's idea of punishment "to be very high."
The judge also reported that the defense had ruled out returning the money.
The defendant did not want to comment on Thursday about the crime or the whereabouts of the money.
However, he did provide information to a police officer during the investigation.
A man, whom he named, pressured him into committing the crime by threatening him.
On this man's instructions, he let two men he did not know into the bank through an emergency exit door.
Not he, but these two fled with the money.
However, the police officer continued, further investigations revealed no evidence that the man mentioned was involved in the crime.
The verdict is scheduled for mid-February.
Further news from Feldkirchen and the Munich district can be found here.